Connecticut Group Editor Matt DeRienzo developed the idea for the page, while NHR Investigations Editor Michelle Tuccitto is the main administrator. Managing Editor Mark Brackenbury posted missing persons photos across the top of the Facebook page and began liking similar pages to help find new audience.

Tuccitto said the page was “pretty basic at first” with merely links to stories about missing persons. Now, family members of missing persons -- such as the mother of Billy Smolinski -- post frequently. Tuccitto hopes the page eventually becomes a tool to help solve the cases. Do you have a local issue that would support a separate Facebook page that might draw in community like this one?

2) Using a high school sports blog to inform, interact

Since the first post of his On Prep Sports blog in April 2006, San Gabriel Valley Tribune prep sports editor Fred Robledo said he has tried to make his blog the home for all local high school sports. To do that, he's used all the right tactics to build a blog audience: He posts frequently. He provides real-time updates. He continually interacts with readers. He links to interesting related content on other sites. And, when appropriate, he offers his own opinions.

Robledo also embeds photos, videos, polls, CoverItLive chats, Twitter feeds and more. A moderator keeps an eye on the live chat feeds and several correspondents contribute to the blog. Robledo has nearly 1,000 Twitter followers and will soon be creating a SGVT prep sports Facebook page. His videos routinely get between 500 and 1,000 views. Some blog threads have reached 500 comments. In short, he's fulfilled the mission he set out on in 2006.

Robledo’s tip: Identify your audience and cater to it. Be active with the audience – “there is no other [prep] blog that has as much reader involvement," he said. "That's what separates us from the rest.”

3) Making ths most of a community contest at TwinCities.com / St. Paul Pioneer Press

For the past 60 years of the St. Paul Winter Carnival, the Pioneer Press has run a Treasure Hunt. By the thousands, treasure hunters tramp through public parks in search of a medallion worth up to $10,000 in cash. Day by day, cryptic clues in the newspaper and on TwinCities.com have lead people toward the medallion. Hunt traditions have been handed down through the generations and a documentary film has been produced about the hunt.

In 2011, Pioneer Press editor Mike Burbach said Treasure Hunt traffic hit a new high of 1.9 million page views, which contributed to a record-smashing 16 million page views for twincities.com for the month. This was no accident. New digital components made the difference. For example, this year saw the addition of daily videos, a Treasure Hunt Facebook page and a scrambled version of the clue that was featured exclusively online. Hunters could also participate in a UPickem contest and online forums, plus could access hunt-related content via a widget on the home page and temporary channels to mobile sites and apps.

For anyone considering starting such a contest, the Pioneer Press has the following tips:

Jan 24, 2012

Here's this week's version of the The Three, the e-mail we sent internally to try and communicate good ideas, best practices and advice from the newsrooms at MediaNews Group and Journal Register Company.

THE THREEVol. #2, Week of Jan. 23

1) Google+ Hangout with Michigan Governor Rick Snyder

Last Dec. 22, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder participated in a Google+ hangout hosted by The Macomb Daily and The Oakland Press. Topics discussed included updates on the governor's major initiatives, the current political climate in Michigan, the national political scene and Snyder's personal life.

Karen Workman, community engagement editor at The Oakland Press, said a reporter and editor used one computer to produce the video chat, and three Flipcams were used to shoot it. At The Oakland Press, a third staffer sat off-camera to curate the meeting. Oakland Press Online Editor Stephen Frye said the biggest stress was whether the video bandwidth would hold up, but he said there were no issues during the chat.

The end result of this experiment included a story that mixed traditional text with video from Snyder's interview, giving the reader a unique multimedia experience, one that intentionally bounced the reader between text and video. Because who says text and video always need to be viewed separately? Sometimes, the best answer is to integrate them seamlessly. The Oakland Press and Macomb Daily also produced a Storify stream that captured live Tweets and videos, and wrote articles on the news made by Snyder and on the experiment itself.

For other staffs who want to try video chats, Frye advice: “You're live on camera, so you don't want to be looking down and reading notes. So know your questions and have fun.”

2) Using ScribbleLive to cover severe weather in the Denver area

In covering a snowstorm, The Denver Post used a free trial of the live-blogging tool ScribbleLive. The idea came to Social Media Editor Dan Petty after seeing impressive live-blogging examples from other news organizations.

Petty curated tweets using the #COwx hashtag and searched for “Colorado snow,” “Denver snowstorm,” etc. He pulled content from Facebook, from other news organizations and bloggers and -- obviously -- from the Post newsroom itself. All the content was posted in a live blog that received traffic from the Post's main story. The Denver Post encouraged readers to submit photos through a Google submission form, and also featured live radars and various widgets to communicate relevant information. Six different reporters contributed to the coverage. The live blog received 5,581 page views, and received more than 300 shares on Facebook and 137 retweets on Twitter.

Petty's advice to other newsrooms experimenting with live blogging major news events: Have multiple contributors. For a breaking news blog to be effective, a significant number of people need to be feeding it. For more information, e-mail Petty or reach him on Twitter.

The stories and the follow-up coverage drew 25,225 page views. Skoch blogged about the tools used to cover the story and then the user reaction to how it was covered, and a TMJ Community Media Lab blogger wrote about the shootout through the prism of mental health issues.

Skoch's advice on fast-moving breaking stories: “Just be flexible and fast. Be ready to scrap your original plans for the night and throw everything you’ve got into getting the big new story.”

Jan 22, 2012

As I've made my way to many of the newsrooms in the Digital First Media family, one question I'm consistently asked is: "Can you give some examples of who is doing 'Digital First' right?" Truth is, there isn't one place that's doing it all right -- not at DFM, not in the world -- but there are examples all over the company where we're using traditional and digital storytelling tools to produce journalism we can be proud of.

To make sure that information was making its way around the company in a form that was succinct but helpful, I decided to start a weekly memo called, "The Three," where we discuss three projects we're proud of and describe how it was done. The first edition went out last week, and below is an edited version. I'll be posting an edited version of each week's note on this blog as well.

THE THREE #1, Week of Jan. 16

1) Special weather coverage from the San Gabriel Valley Tribune Steve Hunt, senior editor at San Gabriel Valley Tribune, and his staff made the best of a bad situation when a dangerous wind storm ripped through their coverage area. While the main office was without power in West Covina, Calif., Hunt said the staff didn’t need a newsroom and proved “that we have not only embraced a digital-first mentality, but also that we serve our communities much better than our competitors online.” The SGVT staff worked with sister paper Pasadena Star-News in the coverage.

The online team of Erick Galindo and Daniel Tedford launched a crowdsourced community map and readers shared their stories of damage. In a four-day period, the Google Map received 170,000 page views. Traffic to the site was nearly tripled during the widespread storm coverage, with use of social media, the website, e-mail alerts and so on to promote coverage.

In addition to staff multimedia and stories, videos filed by community members were also posted. The staff used Scribd to publish documents related to the storm.

The morale in the newsroom was boosted, he also said. The staff members “were just motivated to do the best job they could covering a big local disaster that affected most of our readers,” Hunt said.

Since the windstorm, Hunt has filled an open position with a backpack journalist.

In today’s digital age, and being part of Digital First Media, a reporter doesn’t necessarily need a newsroom to provide the latest, breaking news coverage.

2) Jim Matthews scandal coverage at Norristown, Pa.-based The Times Herald The arrest of Jim Matthews, the brother of MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, was and continues to be a major breaking story for the Norristown staff. The Times Herald began working on the story in 2009, and it still continues to unfold, with the recent charges filed and court documents released outlining Matthews’ alleged perjury and false swearing while testifying under oath.

The DA's investigation “was helped in part by the reporting two of our staffers had done and some editorials written along the way,” according to Online Editor John Berry.

One result of the articles and editorials -- which focused on the weakness of Pennsylvania's Sunshine and campaign finance laws -- was a new law that featured stiffer penalties for violating the Sunshine Law.

Because The Times Herald broke the “Breakfastgate” story in 2010, competitors and national outlets -- including The New York Times -- have cited it in their own coverage.

Lesson learned: Follow up and sticking with a big story is important in any newsroom. Investigative reporting, strong editorials and a nose for news led to an arrest and a change to an important law. That's watchdog journalism at its best.

3) A community editorial board at Northern Michigan-based The Morning SunWhen Morning Sun Editor Rick Mills launched a community editorial board, he said he knew there was a “growing knowledge that a strong opinion page was just as important to the community as news coverage.” Mills said he was uncomfortable with the idea of every local editorial coming from him, an editor or even the staff.

Mills wrote a column outlining his perspective and suggested community members contribute to the opinion page on a regular basis. He created an application process and community members submitted informal introductions, answered some questions and addressed three local issues they felt deserved attention. Fifteen applicants responded. The resulting community editorial board has ranged from nine to 15 members. Regular contributors post weekly and share a community blog on the website.

“They have been extremely valuable in terms of ideas for editorials, positions and guidance, but also contribute equally to story generation. For a small staff, we more than doubled our eyes and ears by having community members looking out, talking to friends and coworkers and bringing back to us what they hear and see and think,” Mills said.

“My main advice would be to try it in some form, get media lab folks involved, teach them, and show them how important a newspaper's voice and a strong editorial page are,” Mills said. “In many communities there are many sources for news, we need to lead on more than just news and readers like and respond to strong local opinion pages.”

Nov 28, 2011

For some time now, there's been buzz that going "digital first" and producing quality journalism were mutually exclusive goals. I assume part of that is because companies that have gone "digital first" -- and few have done it as all-out as the Journal Register Company -- have been forced to reduce staff as part of making that move toward the future. Then again, so has just about every other newspaper in the United States, regardless of whether they've gone "digital first" or not. Reducing staff is not part of going digital; it's part of a natural re-sizing of newsrooms that's been made necessary by the new economics of media.

That's why I'm so excited about the re-organization of our newsroom at The New Haven Register: because it shows that you can address the needs of traditional journalism while still reorienting your newsroom toward the future.

Among the key elements of this re-organization are the creation of an investigative and in-depth reporting team, led by accomplished Register staffers Michelle Tuccitto Sullo and Mary O'Leary. This is the first time in 20 years that the Register will have a dedicated investigative reporting team. Additionally, we'll create new beats to better cover Yale University and issues relating to the Long Island Sound.

At the same time, we're still pushing to fundamentally change the way the Register newsroom operates. To achieve that, we've created an audience engagement team, led by Ed Stannard and Angela Carter, which will partner with readers, community groups and other key constituents in New Haven. Anyone who's spent five minutes with me knows how important I think audience and community engagement are. The balance of power in the publisher-consumer relationship has completely flipped in the past 15 years. It used to be local residents couldn't get by without reading their local paper. Now, thanks to an explosion of new sources and ubiquitous access to content, publishers need each individual consumer a hell of a lot more than they need us. So it's up to us to prove to our readers that we're relevant, and the first step in that process is to actually talk to them. We've already been doing that all across Journal Register -- most notably with the Open Newsroom Project at the Register Citizen in Torrington, Conn. -- but this formalizes it at one of our larger papers.

Breaking news is also tremendously important in a media world that is now permanently 24/7. So we've created a breaking news team that will be run by Cara Baruzzi. That team will focus on producing breaking news on all platforms, but also on providing the essential service of curating the best local information about New Haven. That means not just linking to the Register's own reporting, but linking to the work of its Community Media Lab members and other local news sources like the New Haven Independent.

These moves, driven by Connecticut Group Editor Matt DeRienzo, set the Register up nicely to head into the digital future. And, yes, that digital future still does include traditional reporting and investigative journalism.

ALSO: Matt DeRienzo wrote an excellent post on this topic this morning.

NEW HAVEN, CT – Journal Register Company, a leading local news and information company managed by Digital First Media, announced today that The New Haven Register has formed an investigative team and engagement team as part of the Digital First newsroom reorganization.

“Quality journalism and digital journalism are not mutually exclusive,” said Jim Brady, Editor-in-Chief of Digital First Media. “Our audiences demand quality stories and they expect to be able to consume those stories on the device and platform of their choosing. The structure we are putting in place in New Haven is one that will allow us to react to breaking news, dedicate journalists to in-depth reporting and to deepen the relationship with our audience.”

The changes to the Register’s newsroom included the creation of:

Investigative and In-Depth Reporting Team: Led by Michelle Tuccitto Sullo, a 14-year newsroom veteran who led coverage of FBI investigations into corruption in community government, and Mary O’Leary, who has 32 years as a reporter and editor at The Register, this team marks the first time in 20 years that The Register will have a formalized beat dedicated to investigative reporting. O’Leary will also devote time to in-depth “explainer” format reporting to address topics facing the community and “fact check” style reporting to determine the truth in statements made by public officials and newsmakers.

Audience Engagement Team: Angela Carter and Ed Stannard have been named Community Engagement Editors and will lead outreach efforts to listen to and partner with readers, including local organizations and neighborhood groups – as well as growing The Register’s Community Media Lab. Carter, a Register staffer for 16 years, has spent much of her career as a city-side and business reporter and is also a member of Journal Register Company’s ideaLab. Stannard, who has worked at the Register for 21 years, has most recently served as Metro Editor and has covered religion and transportation issues. Angel Diggs, the Register’s librarian, will also join the Engagement Team as her role shifts from archiving the newspaper’s content to opening up those archives – for the community to access and enrich and for the newsroom to bring to life on the web. Diggs has worked at the Register for 31 years.

Breaking News Team: Led by Cara Baruzzi, The Register’s former business editor, the Breaking News Team will serve all platforms including SMS, mobile and social media to meet audience demands that breaking news be delivered across all platforms. The Breaking News Team will also deliver a Connecticut-wide curated breaking news report by linking out to other information sources – including The New Haven Independent, members of The Register’s Community Media Lab and sources traditionally viewed as competitors.

In addition to the creation of these teams, The Register is creating beats dedicated to coverage of Yale University and land use, business climate and environmental health of the Long Island Sound.

“With our digital audience being larger than our print audience we have to increase the number of audience touch points. Digital is real time and the audience expects us to respond in real time but being fast does not excuse you from the basic tenets of journalism,” said Matt DeRienzo, Connecticut Group Editor. “The focus of this reorganization is to craft an agile, digital newsroom that focuses on journalism and creating content that is relevant to the lives of our readers.”

The staff reorganization follows other changes implemented by DeRienzo since being named as Connecticut Group Editor. The Register recently launched an expanded Fact Check Initiative where every article published on NHRegister.com includes a submission box where readers can report inaccurate or missing information. Corrections are published to The Register’s Fact Check Blog — as well as noted in the original story.

“Digital is our primary publishing platform and we have to make sure we’re holding ourselves to the journalism’s standards,” said Mr. DeRienzo. “We don’t want to make mistakes but when we do we will be transparent about them. Our audience deserve as much and demands as much.”